Story Archiving
One of the aims of the Culture Shock! project was to "develop a modern day community led interpretation of museum collections for communities in the North East." One way in which this aim was achieved was through the accessioning of all the digital stories created into the museum collections. This means that nearly 600 digital stories have becomes museum objects for future generations. The stories have also helped improve our knowledge of existing collections and objects.
The Culture Shock! project has challenged the way the museum sector uses digital media as it created digital output that was almost wholly digital. Before the Culture Shock! project, Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums did not have an accession policy for digital photographs or digital video.
The evaluation of the Culture Shock! project by Culture:Unlimited has demonstrated that this accessioning of these digital artefacts means that "the story and the artefact are one and the same". This was a significant professional challenge to the museum sector in which the two are thought of as separate. With 3-D artefacts, they cannot speak for themselves so require interpretation. The artefacts from Culture Shock! have intrinisic interpretation which is arguably less open to challenge because it is personal and embodied in the object.
A number of new 3-D objects have also been purchased and accessioned into the museum collections at Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums as a result of Culture Shock!. These new objects have been collected as a direct result of the digital stories that have been created as the stories have identified a "gap" in the exisiting collections.
For more information about the Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums collecting policy, please click on the following link below for more information;
http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/userfiles/file/TWAM_Acquisition_and_Disposals_Policy_2009_v%201_5.pdf